The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners (Penguin Handbooks)

Why are there 5 stars next to nearly all the reviews? Because this text is most deserving of them. I'd give 6 stars if I could. Russian, like any inflectional language, is an especially difficult one to grasp but this book dosn't miss a beat and is most excellent for the novice and self-taught types. It is exceedingly well organized and all inclusive and you notice a rapid progression into advanced reading. There are parts that are skippable (is that a word?) if you are only interested in reading but so much detail is in the footnotes, etc. that it is worth reading every little thing. Tons of material of interest is also included as well as the many nuances of the language. I absolutely recommend this as a first text. The first obstacle will be the alphabet. Having learned ancient Greek, I had less difficulty than some others might have but you will soon grow used to the oddities of Cyrillic. You won't be dissapointed, I promise !

If one is going to learn Russian--by which I mean learn it well enough to actually carry on an intelligent conversation--one must start with the grammar. Current products that promise easy, quick, learning of a language as difficult as Russian are simply marketing (expensive!)fantasy through huge advertising campaigns. I set about to learn Russian seriously, and this book was a good first step. I also got Kenneth Katzner's Dictionary, which is the absolute best in the world, and something I use daily. After a year's work, I bought an inexpensive Pimsleur audio disk, so I could hear what these words actually sounded like, and this package is doing the job for me. This book intelligently starts at the beginning, with the alphabet. It shows how letters are both printed and written in cursive, and then, from the 1st lesson, it begins to introduce the important grammatical principles underlying this extraordinarily difficult language. One quickly comes to appreciate how useless the exhorbitantly priced "interactive" programs are, which rely on the learning of many phrases. All they are is an electronic version of a phrase book. The person who has invested their hard earned money in such courses will realize, the first time they try to talk to a Russian, that they have squandered their money. In the first place, the words they have so carefully learned are virtually guaranteed to come back at them in a declined form, which, if they cannot recognize it, will sound like another word. How could they possibly commincate without knowing the accusative, genitive, dative, nominative, prepositional or instrumental case endings? A language like this is a serious undertaking (similar to classical Latin) and has to be approached with respect. Brown's "Russian Course" is a sensible, down-to-earth, traditional grammar, with exercises, readings, self-tests, vocabularies, and a really concise declension chart at the end which is ABSOLUTELY useful and necessary! Well worth the modest cost. Five star. No way to go wrong if you have a serious desire to learn this language.

I've been using this along the side with rosetta stone and both have helped me learna great deal of russian in the last three months.

very helpful to learn how to:
- pronounce the words
- read and write
- use grammar
- and for the vocabulary

I chose to use this book as the textbook for my Russian class because it was cheaper than Golosa or Nachalo. That was a mistake. The book includes all the grammatical information that you need to speak Russian, but a beginning Russian student needs more than just grammar. I don't know the author of this book, but I'm guessing that he doesn't place much importance on teaching. It seems he still adheres to the grammar-translation approach to teaching Russian. The organization of the book is confusing, neither thematic nor grammatical. The exercises are brief, and could have easily been lifted from a Russian textbook that was printed in the 50's or 60's. Frankly, I don't know why this book has gotten such rave reviews, unless it's being compared to not having any book at all. It's a lot cheaper than a real textbook, but there's a reason why it's cheaper. If you want a cheap way to learn Russian, check out the Berlitz Self-Teacher from the library.